I remember I took a black consciousness class in college. I enjoyed the class, it was one of the few times I was encouraged to write more from feeling than from research. The professor urged debate, sometimes enlightening other times it felt like a derailment, I could argue with my peers at lunch, I paid for a class. Anyway, certain classmates would especially irk me, I don’t even remember their names (shit am I old now) but I remember they were so fake deep; they would have the most asinine theories, separatist logic, just loud and wrong all the damn time. They were basically everything I hate about hotep twitter now. Now, “Hotep” originally refers to peace, attached to the names of benevolent rulers in ancient Egypt. These days, it refers to dude on the internet who lives at home, rocks basketball shorts as underwear and views himself as a King. Or as some women on twitter would say, ashy.

Hoteps aren’t that hard to spot, they usually hide behind images of a black revolutionary on internet spaces that have a large amount of black women, they are in, well, black consciousness classes. Their mission is noble, for the betterment of their people, their methods, such as internet trolling, are not. They love to make memes with Egyptian images or the same 6 stock images of a black couple with things that only they and people like them would ever say or agree with. They make distinctions between the “woke” and the “sheep”, “bitches” and “queens” , that distinction is whether you buy the shit they’re selling.

Then there’s the paranoia. Everything is a ruse to keep us sleep. Empire, Love & Hip Hop, Young Thug all ploys to set back black people. They are showing men kissing on television and now black boys are going to turn gay. Young Thug is wearing a dress because the white man wants black men are being feminized. Feminism has black women are being brought up to not need a man so where are the black babies going to come from now? We’re going extinct (because cops keep killing us for the mildest of inconveniences) because the black woman is being too difficult and won’t worship their crown less king. They have declared war on feminism, this radical wave of free thinking has turned women against their fellow man. Hoteps operate under the guise that the worst thing a black woman can be is alone, they themselves are alone but as men they have the illusion of having not yet chosen (even if no one checking for them maybe super liberal white women who think they’re deep).

The hoteps are quite a misinformed bunch. They often quote writers who quoted a writer who quoted another one who referenced a text another writer claims to have read. They love misleading surveys and made up facts about Ancient Egypt and slavery. They’re contrarians, so whether it’s some new Jordans out or a new movie, they will not only hate it but will dig into the depths of fake deep to try and shame you for it, likely with the Harriet Tubman “if they knew they were slaves” quote, completely out of context. Millenial militants love to tell people about themselves….via $400 iPhones.

Like I said, Ashy’s heart is in the right place, but their head….is firmly in their behind. Behind the flawed rationale and stench of self importance, is still a man. Insecure, frightened, but still a man, a brother, a comrade. Like my old classmates, sometimes you can’t help but just shake your head and laugh at their tomfoolery. They are glorified cyberbullies, they like to type loud as a motorbike but wouldnt bust a grape in a fruit fight. Stay woke, tho.

I’ve been very removed from social media/Internet for the last year so I know this is very late but thank you. This makes perfect sense. I’m very close with a guy just like this. Hotep all the way. I thought it was just me detecting this bs. He had me thinking I was a crazy “sheep.”